title: Individual differences in personality as a function of degree of handedness: consistent-handers are less sensation seeking, more authoritarian, and more sensitive to disgust.
abstract: Prior research indicates that consistent-handedness is associated with decreased access to right hemisphere processing and consequent decreased cognitive flexibility. Handedness differences on three dimensions of personality related to cognitive flexibility were investigated. Experiment 1 found that consistent-handedness was associated with decreased sensation seeking. Experiment 2 found that consistent-handedness was associated with increased Right Wing Authoritarianism. Experiment 3 found that consistent-handedness was associated with increased sensitivity to disgust. Prior research has shown associations between decreased sensation seeking, increased authoritarianism, and increased disgust sensitivity, and consistent-handedness appears to underlie all of these associations. Personality researchers are encouraged to include handedness as a factor in analyses, as failure to do so can lead to systematic mis-estimation of sex differences due to the over-representation of females among consistent-handers.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Toledo , OH , USA.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Christman
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D012727:Sex Characteristics